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Garden 2011
Table of Contents
· Indoor
There isn’t much to see yet. I have been spending the last year learning about gardening generally and permaculture specifically. Before I start tearing up the yard I would like to prove my green thumb.
To begin you can see my first seeds grown indoors as well as my first transplants of pineapple, sansevieria trifasciata, and epipremnum aureum. The seeds were mostly typical fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, beans, and lettuce plus some herbs like oregano, basil, and sage.
These plants are the foundation of my clean air. Maximizing the oxygen levels in your blood increases brain function. These plants perform the function of removing various toxins from the house as well as producing enough oxygen to offset my consumption. Here is a video describing their abilities and here is a NASA document that comes to the same conclusions but with a few more plants. While the pineapple doesn’t technically clean the air, I think it is aesthetically striking and it works its magic at night, as does the sansevieria, via CAM (crassulacean acid metabolism) photosynthesis.
Here you can see my scrap wood table turned grow chamber by suspending a pair of shop lights from underneath and placing the various pots used to start the seeds atop a heating mat. The smaller pots, while easier to handle, dry out quicker and require more watering maintenance.
In these pictures you can clearly see two kinds of lettuce, mint, broccoli, dill, strawberries, oregano, basil, and sage.
· Deck
Moving to the deck a few months later and everything is growing quite nicely. Here you can see beans, broccoli, tomatoes, watermelon, lettuce, pineapple, peppers, and eggplant.
After yet more months the fruits of my labor begin to show up. The only hiccup was a little blossom end rot on a few of the tomatoes, but most were perfect. I prefer the smaller yellow pear tomatoes for cooking as they are much easier to slice in half and toss into a pot or pan.
· Morning Glories
In addition to the fruit and vegetables, I tried my hand at growing a wall of morning glories (on the railing of the deck). While it was a bit sparse, it was not lacking in flowers.
· Storm
A rather powerful storm uprooted 2 trees and snapped another. One of the uprooted trees, once cut off stood back up. Hopefully it begins to coppice (grow new shoots from what is left of the trunk). The wood will be used next year to build some raised beds.
· Other
Lastly you can see two pictures of the very back yard, where the forest has been replaced by obnoxious condominiums, where I had cut up a few fallen trees. I am planning on tending the few trees along the creek to screen off the condos. This will also serve as a test ground for some raised beds next year.
While these next pictures don’t document much, they are somewhat interesting. The tree being strangled is actually somewhat noteworthy as those vines have been slowly killing trees along one of the creeks. I have since cut them back.
Here is a random picture, in both warm and cool, of what is now rich gas country. You can see 2, maybe 3, well heads in this otherwise beautiful country setting. Sigh.
